Melancholy reflections.
I. SELF-CONTEMPLATION IN REFERENCE TO THE PAST. His life has sped swiftly—like a courier, or the swift boat of the Euphrates or the Nile, or the swooping eagle (Job 9:25, Job 9:26), and without seeming prosperity. Here he perverts the history of the past; but memory as welt as reason is poisoned.
II. IN REFERENCE TO THE FUTURE. (Job 9:27, Job 9:28.) Hope has broken its wing. The effort to remove the gloom from his brow is useless, unless he could remove the weight frown his heart. That—the sense of the disfavour of God—comes roiling back from every effort, like the stone of Sisyphus.
III. THE VANITY OF MORAL ENDEAVOUR. (Job 9:29-31.) He feels himself as under an absolute decree of guilt which no earthly power can possibly remove. Should he use snow-water and lye, i.e. employ all means to justify himself, still his absolute Judge would plunge him back into a state of horrible pollution.
IV. THE INEQUALITY OF THE STRIFE BETWEEN MAN AND GOD. Were it between man and man, he has no doubt of the success of his cause.
V. THE WANT OF A COUNT OF APPEAL. (Job 9:32, Job 9:33.) There is no "daysman," or arbitrator, who can lay the hand of authority upon both of us, and, by determining the cause, bring the strife to an end.
VI. PASSIONATE APPEAL AND RESOLVE. The appeal is for freedom of speech (Job 9:34, Job 9:35; Job 10:1, Job 10:2). The last, or one of the last, boons that honourable men can be disposed to deny to the oppressed; one that God will never deny to his intelligent creatures. Yet Job, overcome by the dogmatism of his friends, seems to think it is now denied him. The resolve is that since life has now become a weariness and a disgust, he will give free way to words, regardless of consequences. In reviewing this wild complaint of an unhinged intelligence, we may learn the following lessons:
1. God is not to be thought of as absolute Power, but rather as absolute Justice and Love. The former is the conception of a demon, the latter that of the Father of spirits.
2. All sides and aspects of nature must be viewed as equally revelations of God.
3. Man is never weak when he has right on his side, and, though he seems to be crushed, he will be exalted for ever.
4. Darkness in the reason is no proof of the withdrawal of God's favour. Our subjection and personal sufferings do not affect the eternal objective realities. The clouds may hide, but cannot efface, the sun.
5. God is merciful to our misunderstandings, and detects the spark of faith in the heart of sufferers who may be unconscious of it themselves.—J.
HOMILIES BY R. GREEN